FOODPANDA FIRES OVER 300 EMPLOYEES

The online food ordering platform, Foodpanda, has sacked over 300 of its employees citing automation, which constitute nearly 15 per cent of the company’s overall workforce in the country.
The company issued a statement saying the decision to cut jobs was taken after it achieved about 98 per cent automation rate in order processing, helped by a combination of stronger processes and controls to make operations more efficient.

The online food ordering platform, Foodpanda, has sacked over 300 of its employees citing automation, which constitute nearly 15 per cent of the company’s overall workforce in the country.

The company issued a statement saying the decision to cut jobs was taken after it achieved about 98 per cent automation rate in order processing, helped by a combination of stronger processes and controls to make operations more efficient.

“While we continued to invest in processes and technology we also had to take some difficult decisions but we believe them to be necessary steps on our path to become sustainable and profitable within the targeted timeline,” Saurabh Kochhar, chief executive of Foodpanda India.

The Rocket Internet-supported, Foodpanda is one of the world’s largest online food ordering marketplaces, present across India, Brazil, Russia, South-east Asia and Eastern Europe.

Re-organization of the business was done across every aspect, from technology to processes to customer service, said Kochhar.

From January 2016, the company will stop food delivery in six cities, including Kolkata, Chennai, Nagpur and Coimbatore.